Andrew Ferguson
Children's/YA Author
Film Category
‘Power Rangers: Once and Always’ Review
Posted on April 21, 2023 Leave a Comment
Lots of butt kicking, lots of cute quips, lots of fun but not nearly as much substance as it could have had.
Movie Review: Spider-Man Homecoming
Posted on May 27, 2021 Leave a Comment
I finally did see Homecoming at the end of 2018 when my wife got me the DVD and it was just the breath of fresh air I needed to make me love Spider-Man again.
6 Terrible Bad Guy Lines From the Big Screen
Posted on May 26, 2021 Leave a Comment
This is a list of lame lines of dialogue delivered by villains. Lines that were probably meant to sound cool and sinister but failed to produce quite the right effect.
5 Sci-Fi Tropes I Could Live Without
Posted on March 4, 2021 1 Comment
For some reason, sci-fi is just chock full of certain clichéd tropes, some of which are so very ridiculous that it frankly beggars belief that they ever became clichés. The others are just plain done to death. What follows are some of my (least) favourites.
Super Snappy Speed Reviews: Star Trek Edition
Posted on February 27, 2021 Leave a Comment
The day we’ve all been waiting for with a combination of both hope and dread is finally here. Star Trek: Discovery premieres in America today, and so, in honour of this momentous occasion (and since we Brits won’t be getting it until tomorrow), I am pleased to present Super Snappy Speed Reviews: Star Trek Edition!
We’ve already had super snappy speed reviews for books (twice, in fact), TV shows and films but today it’s going to be a bit different. Today I’ll be reviewing all thirteen Star Trek films in order of release. As ever, these reviews only reflect my own personal opinions and impressions, phasered, disruptored and bat’lethed into just two or three sentences.
7 Things I Hate In Fiction
Posted on February 17, 2021 2 Comments
No matter what genre of fiction or medium of story-telling you’re into (even if you’re into nearly all of them, like me!), we all have our own little things in fiction that we don’t like. Sometimes it’s the little things that can absolutely ruin an otherwise potentially good story for us and make us seriously think about leaving it unread/unwatched/unlistened to.
For your enjoyment, therefore, I have compiled a list of my own fiction bugbears with expositions. Maybe you won’t agree with them all. That’s okay. I’m not for one second suggesting any of these are hard and fast rules about what constitutes a bad story. These are just things that, for me, are a bit of a turn-off. So without further ado and in no particular order…
8 Super Snappy Speed Reviews – Film
Posted on February 15, 2021 Leave a Comment
It’s that time again! We’ve already had super snappy speed reviews for books and TV shows and now it’s time for the film edition. As before, the films I have reviewed here have been selected entirely at random from my ever-growing movie collection and do not necessarily have anything in common (apart from the fact they’re all films), nor are they necessarily films that I particularly liked or disliked, nor are they sorted into any particular order.
As always, these reviews only reflect my own personal opinions and impressions, squeezed, whisked and flattened into a few short sentences. So without further ado…
The End…?
Posted on January 15, 2021 Leave a Comment
It can be tough knowing when to call it a day with your fictional creations. Knowing exactly where and how to end your story in a way which is both memorable and satisfying is hard enough … but if you’ve created characters and a world you’re proud of, you might never want to stop. You might feel like there’s a sequel, a trilogy or a whole saga of novels/films/TV series still to be written. Sooner or later, however, it has to come to an end – as all good things must.
‘But when?!’ I hear you cry.
It depends very much on your story.
A Few Thoughts on Star Trek Beyond
Posted on January 5, 2021 Leave a Comment
My main problem with Beyond was the pacing of the plot. It was fast and exciting almost from the outset, but as any good writer will tell you, speed and excitement cannot make a good story alone. Slower scenes, rich in dialogue and other details are important to allow for a build-up in suspense and to keep the audience abreast of what is actually going on. In particular, these slow scenes are essential for adding substance and meaning to a story.
Suspense: A Deliberately Awful Story
Posted on January 1, 2021 Leave a Comment
Today’s short story came about as a result of a random creatively prompt provided to me by the Android app, Writer Unblocked:
In 1000 words or less, write what happens when a B-movie director gets stuck between floors in an elevator.
When I got this prompt, I couldn’t help but think that it actually sounded a bit like a B-movie about a B-movie director so naturally I thought it would be a bit of a wheeze to write it in screenplay format (or at least, as close to screenplay as I could get it; I’ve never actually written a screenplay before and WordPress has rather messed up my formatting) and give it the paper thin plot, terrible dialogue and half-naked robo-bodybuilder you would expect to find in a B-movie. My tongue was, as you might expect, firmly embedded in my cheek when I wrote this.
Andrew Ferguson 